Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Quitoboquito

We escaped from Tucson after a solid week there; drove west, turned left at Why, and arrived at Organ Pipe. There are still mostly saguaros, but in some places, like on the road just into the campground, there are suddenly many organ pipes.

Yesterday it was too hot to be cooking inside, I did chicken and potatoes on the grill outside. There was an empty site nearby that we cooked and ate at. The grill at our site was just about under the awning, and I didn't want the heat, smoke, or fire coming inside.


This morning we went for a bike ride early, about 10 miles from the campground up to Pinckley Peak and back. The morning light, and the evening, is very pretty.










There are small rolling hills and dips, which are still refreshingly cooler for a few hours after sunrise.


It was slightly chilly when we left, and getting hot the time we returned. It's amazing how the temperature swings with the sun getting high. It the late afternoon, it's a bit too hot for us, could be time to go north....

After our second breakfast, we made sandwiches to go, and drove to Quitoboquito. It is a spring fed oasis right next to the Mexico border, 10 or 15 miles along the border from the main road.




Close to the populated Lukeville / Sonoyto area, there is fence tall enough a person couldn't really get through it. Further out, the fence is meant to prevent trucks or atvs from driving across.



By chance, today the border patrol was giving a talk at the natural monument visitor center. So we got to see the talk, on our way back from poking around the desert at the border. The vehicle fence largely prevents trucks from driving straight across and wrecking the desert. But there are still cases where large ramps are built onto a pickup truck, a second truck drives up over the barrier, and leaf blowers are used to hide the tracks. That's where the cameras, drones, and radar lead the border patrol to visitors. And then all the roads have checkpoints further up.

The park rangers and the border patrol work together closely, and it's serious business. The Kris Eggle visitor center is named for a park ranger who was killed on duty in 2002.

Tuscon Mountain Park

We've been spending the past few days exploring Tuscon, and staying at a very nice BLM spot. But yesterday, we moved over to Tuscon Mountain Park, which is right by Saguaro National Park. (It's actually pronounced "sawaro,"' we learned.)

We got a spot in the campground, off of the main road, surrounded by really tall saguaros.

There are some nice hiking trails around here, which we checked out.

I took a bike ride the next morning, just as the sun was coming up, which was very pretty.

We checked out, then drove over until the national park. We stopped at the visitors center, and watched the informational video.

Then, we drove around the national park a bit. It was really, (REALLY) hot, so the only hiking we did was a little walk on a short trail to see some petroglyphs.

After that, we drove back over to our BLM spot, and stayed the night there. Tuscon has been great, but we're ready to keep moving!

Tucson around town

We've been in Tucson now for almost a week, probably longer than intended, but we caught up on some things. Grocery shopping mostly; yesterday we stopped for milk and came out with 50 bucks off everything, and we also hit up the first Trader Joe's in several thousand miles. Trips to the library (got the taxes done, woohoo!), errands, some clothes at Goodwill, sneakers, etc. Even though we stayed all week at very cool BLM (free) spot, our spending was higher than usual, having stores around.


Sunday we walked around the book festival at the University of Arizona. It looks like a nice campus, which got Elliot thinking maybe going college would be a good idea. I thought this set of bumper stickers on an old truck was funny.


We moved over to the Tucson Mountain campground, for a change, and basic facilities (we were full to the brim...). This park is really nice too, huge saguaros everywhere.



Saturday we went out for lunch at El Torero, a cool old Mexican place that has been there since the 50's. The kids had mild salsa and didn't say it was too hot. I turned red and sweated....


In the afternoon, we watched the airshow at Davis-Monthan AFB, and drove past the huge mothball fields of aircraft.






Earlier in the week we walked through San Xavier Mission, a very impressive Spanish mission from the 1700's.



Alice has been trying out hairstyles this week.

West!

We've been slowly boondocking our way west, towards Tuscon. We spent most of our last day at City of Rocks, doing some climbing and hiking, then drove across the road to some BLM land for the night. The weather was really crazy that night, lots of wind and rain!

The next day, we drove over to Lordsburg, because there was some more BLM land there. We stopped at the library for a bit (REALLY slow Internet!) then drove south out of town. There was a ghost town off the main road a bit, so we drove over there, but it was closed. Then, as we were driving out back to the main road on a different route, this guy in a big front-end loader chased us down and told us that we were on private property (oops!) and that there was a locked gate the way we were going. So we turned around, and went back the way we came.

Our spot was maybe half a mile off the road, in the middle of the desert. The Continental Divide Trail was also nearby, so we checked that out.




The sunset that night was REALLY awesome!



The next morning, we did some camper projects, then packed up and started driving towards the main road. There was a big semi trailer parked up on the other side of the main road that had been there since last night, and as we were driving out, there were two people outside it, flying a cool little drone. We stopped and said hi, and as we were talking, one of them casually mentioned that they were living in the trailer! They graciously gave us a little tour, which was really cool! They've totally converted the trailer into a living space - they've got a workbench, a kitchen, toilet, shower, bed, computer, shelves... It was really cool! With that, you could just pull into any truck stop, and nobody would know the difference - we certainly wouldn't have! They've got a blog too -- Jewel and Warren from area51offgrid.com . You meet a lot of really cool people out here!

then drove back into town, and stopped at the library to figure out where to go. We decided on a casino in Tuscon, or some BLM land if the casino didn't work out. The drive over to Tuscon was very pretty, but it was totally dark by the time we got there.

The casino parking lot was pretty packed (I think it was bingo night) but we managed to find a spot, and we walked up to the door to see if we could stay the night. (On the way over to the door, we checked the Internet, and it was pretty good!) The security guy at the door told us that the tribe who's land the casino is on wasn't letting anyone stay overnight until after Easter. Oh well...

As we were driving up to the BLM land, we didn't see any lights, but as we turned in, suddenly there were tons of RVs! It was really awesome! We counted them the next morning, and there's probably at least 30 or 40 rigs! It's the first time we've ever seen anyone else on BLM land, it's pretty cool!

City of Rocks State Park

We arrived at City of Rocks state park around four p.m, while it was still nice an light out. It took awhile to pick out a campsite, and it was a little bit hard to get into. The spot was sort of a collection of three sites, two farther down, and one pretty high up. We picked the one up high and had to back up into it, so that was interesting. The great thing is that you’re parked right up in the rocks, which range from probably twenty feet, and five feet. Most you cannot climb, but the ones that you can...
Anyway, most of us were pretty tired, but Elliot went right out into the rocks, and stayed out there for about half an hour.
In the morning, me and Elliot headed out into the rocks, the first of several trips. That evening we went to bed tired, scraped, bruised, and very happy. In the morning, we took a quick hike up a large hill, which had a great view. After the hike, we moved down to the visitors center, so me and Elliot could climb around different rocks. We headed out to some BLM land around five, that was just a little drive away. We stayed there one night, and headed out in the morning.

Elephant Butt(e) Lake State Park

After staying on some BLM land just outside TorC, we got packed up and hit the road. The plan was to run some errands, then head over to City of Rocks State Park in the afternoon.

The road, and the spot we stayed at, was on the other side of the Rio Grande from TorC, and the river was pretty dry - only a few inches deep in most places. As we were slowly bumping along the road, we saw this truck with a horse trailer ahead of us drive down into the river, through the Rio Grande, and up the other side!

The rest of us weren't so sure about it, but my dad thought it would be cool, and he was driving, so we drove through the Rio Grande, into TorC! It certainly shortened our trip a bit, it was a ways along the undeveloped, one-lane road to the next bridge.

We had a bunch of errands to run - we needed to do some laundry, get some groceries, etc. But first, INTERNET! We stopped by the library for a bit, then over to the laundromat for an hour or two. After that, then we went over to Walmart to get some groceries. By the time we got through all that, it was mid afternoon, so we decided to go over to some BLM land nearby instead of City of Rocks.

We drove a few minutes out of town, then got off the highway onto this little dirt road that led up onto a hill, on what our maps said was BLM land. The view was great, so we unpacked ourselves, put out the awning, opened all the windows, etc. (We even were able to get some pretty fast Internet by cranking up the antenna!). Then, just as we were about to start hanging up our laundry to dry, some guys in a pickup truck drove up and told us that the land ACTUALLY belonged to the golf course below the hill. A little disgruntled, we packed up and drove over to nearby Elephant Butte Lake State Park. We were planning to only stay one night, but when we got there, we discovered that you could park on the beach, right by the lake, and there was good Internet...




We ended up staying for three nights. The lake was beautiful, we were able to take showers, my dad did some work on the taxes, we did a bunch of biking -- it was pretty great!